by
Randy Foreman, Reference Librarian
What’s New on Lexis? Lexis and West "Headnotes" and Digests
compared
By Randy Foreman, Educational Services Librarian
What’s new on Lexis? Lexis "Headnotes," and Callaghan’s
Michigan Digest. Lexis has had an editorial enhancement called "Core
Concepts" for a couple of years now. However, Lexis now refers to
these as "headnotes." Most lawyers and law students are aware
of the term "headnotes," and generally associate the word with
the editorial enhancements found in West publications. West, fortunately,
does not have a trademark interest in the term, and so now Lexis is using
it as well.
Lexis has also made available online a set of Digests known by many Michigan
attorneys as "Callaghan’s Michigan Digest." This set of
digests is an alternative to West’s Michigan Digest. Callaghan’s
is actually published by Matthew Bender, a company that is owned by the
same parent company that owns Lexis, Reed Elsevier.
Lexis’ published digests and headnotes do not have the continuity
and scope of the West product. With Lexis, the headnotes only go back
a few years, and there is no relationship between the new "headnotes,"
the annotations published in Callaghan’s, and the annotations in
Lexis’ statutory publications (such as MCLS and USCS).
With West, the headnotes at the beginning of the cases are identical to
the topically arranged headnotes in the digests. West classifies the headnotes
at the beginning of the cases by legal topic, and then compiles those
very same headnotes into the various West digests. Any of those headnotes
that pertain to a statute will also appear as annotations in the West
published statutes (such as MCLA and USCA).
Lexis "Headnotes" are relatively new. They are being written
retrospectively for older cases. Most cases published over the last 5
years now contain Lexis headnotes, but coverage is spotty for cases older
than that.
There is no paper digest of these Lexis headnotes. The headnotes exist
online only. Thus, Lexis headnotes have limited depth, and can only be
used online. Callaghan’s has long existed in paper format, and is
now available online. However, the annotations (read "headnotes")
found in Callaghan’s are not the headnotes found online preceding
the Lexis published case. (Note that Callaghan’s only contains Michigan
cases. I have been unable to find any other digests published by Lexis).
Thus, the Callaghan’s annotations ("headnotes") are available
online from Lexis, or in paper.
To make matters even more confusing, the annotations in the Lexis published
statutes such as MCLS and USCS contain yet another set of annotations,
i.e. "headnotes." These case annotations exist in both paper
and online, but only in the statute database in question. Thus, MCLS and
USCS both contain annotations, but those annotations are not compiled
in any digests, and they do they appear at the beginning of any cases.
But while it may make it confusing for those of us doing research, we
should all be grateful to Lexis, Matthew Bender, and Reed Elsevier for
providing employment to those many many attorneys who write those three
different types of "headnotes."